The Department for Multiple Sclerosis in Sheba Hopsital will present for the first time a novel kit for sensory training, that improves patients’ brain activity. The kit will be presented in the BioMed Israel Week 2010, which will be held on July 14th-16th in Tel Aviv.
The kit is based on cylinders that come in varied textures, and is designed for populations that suffer from a decline in feeling at the palms, including the healthy aging population that suffers from an age-related decrease in sensory feeling. The kit should also help patients who suffer from neuropathic diseases, which cause an advanced decrease of sensory feeling due to the peripheral neuronal injury. Other target populations include patients who suffer from diseases of small blood vessels, patients with cancer who receive chemotherapy that leads to similar injury, and patients after brain infraction, or multiple sclerosis patients, in which the sensory injury is due to a brain or spinal cord injury.
The kit includes 24 cylinders, a string for the parts, a DVD set with instructions and a bag to hold them all. The use of the kit is simple: the exercise is conducted with closed-shut eyes, while feeling and identifying the texture of each cylinder for 15 minutes a day.
The new kit, in which the difficulty level (as determined by the texture) can be as befitting the user, was developed by the Department for Multiple Sclerosis in Sheba Hospital. Among the participants in the project were Prof. Anat Achiron, neurologist and head of the Multiple Sclerosis Center, Simona Gelb, occupational therapist and Michal Grinberg Abrahami, industrial designer and product developer. According to the developer team, the novelty of the invention lies in the fact that the training method is based on the learning capability and plasticity of the brain. “Recent researches have proven that training can lead to an increase in the number of synaptic connections, which correlates with an improvement in function. In the research that we have conducted on multiple sclerosis patients with sensory injury… we have found that after practicing there was an improvement of 12.5% in a PDT2 sensory test and an improvement of 27% in an MFT sensory test – and that’s after home training for three weeks.”
According to the developers, the new, user-friendly therapeutic tool has special significance for the younger of age (children and teenagers) with sensory injuries, since it enables them to practice daily in an independent manner. The kit, the price of which to the consumer will be 350 NIS, will become available during June 2010.

ILSI-BioMed Israel 2010
‘ILSI-BioMed Israel 2010′ is the annual main event of the Israeli life sciences industry. The week includes a professional international conference with the participation of the best experts (CEOs and senior managers from companies in the fields of bio-pharma and medical devices, researchers and scientists, entrepreneurs, publicists, venture capital funds managers and private investors) from Israel and abroad, and a show that presents the newest innovations. ILSI-BioMed Israel 2010, which has won international acclaim and is considered the second largest conference in the world after the United States, will be held between the 14th and 16th of June at the David Intercontinental hotel in Tel Aviv.

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It’s not WHAT you know, it’s WHO you know!

Relationships are the catalyst for success!

Do the above two statements look familiar? They should. They are the axioms of the Networking Theory (name not trademarked, invented on the spot). While networking seems to be the new religion of the business folks, I daresay that it’s been around for quite a bit. Even apes have it in them to do some network, hence the existence of the beta, gamma and delta males in the pack.

Quite a bit of water has flown under the bridge since our ascent from monkeydom, but the principle of networking remains. If you know the right people who can take your ideas and make something of them, or vice versa, then you have a valuable commodity on your hands. Everybody collaborates, and usually both sides of the equation come out with a profit. It is for that reason that we in the Israeli ILSI-BioMed Blog have decided to publish the profiles of some Italian companies working in the biomedical field and are coming to Israel. They are interested in meeting suitable Israeli business partners, and it is our fervent hope that profitable collaborations will come out of this post.

 The companies:

Eufoton Medical Lasers

Sprin Technologies, for sustainable chemistry

Zeta Research, business for research

Zcube, drug delivery technology concepts

Biostrands, diagnostics for drug and therapy monitoring

Source: Ms. Sonia Guetta, Israel-Italy Chamber of Commerce & Industry

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SAVE THE DATE

May 11^th, 16:00-19:00

Beit Chel Ha’avir, 15  Jabotinski Street, Herzelia

Advantages of Manufacturing in Israel

The seminar will focus on issues related to options, advantages and Governmental policies associated with manufacturing of Medical Devices and Biopharma products in Israel. 

The event will be moderated by Moshe Mizrahy, founder of Nitzanim Medical Fund 

Agenda

16:00-16:20           Moshe Mizrahy – Introduction

16:20-16:40           Dr. Ora Dar, Head of Life Sciences Sector & Biotechnology Consultant to the Chief Scientist  
“Chief Scientist policies as related to manufacturing in Israel” 

16:40:17:00           Uri Bechor, Flextronics – electronics, mechanical, optics, 
                                      lasers  

17:00: 17:20          Shmulik Glick, STI Laser – special metal devices 

17:20-17:40          Shuki Weinstein, Sorvan – Sterilization of Medical Devices 

17:40-18:00          Dr. Elisheva Yonish-Rouach, Protein Production Services 
                                     (PPS) – protein production

18:00-18:20          Dr. Shimon Amselem, Nextar Ltd., Aminolab – GMP/GLP 
                                     Pharma manufacturing and formulation facility

18:00-18:20          Nadav Weininger, Cure Medical Neopharm Group – Pharma 
                                     and Medical Device manufacturing facility

18:20-18:40          Q&A, Conclusion

Who Should Attend? 

CEO, COO and CFO of life science start-up companies
Operations managers, purchasing & procurement managers 
QC managers

Participation fees of 100 NIS for non ILSI members and 50 NIS for ILSI members, 
will be collected at the entrance

PLEASERSVP!!! at  03-600-5008 or   03-600-5118
sima@ilsi.org.il ; ayelet@ilsi.org.il
ILSI | 155 Bialik St. | Ramat Gan | | 52523 | Israel | 03-6005008/118

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Let’s face it: we’re dealing with an aging population. There’s no way around this fact, and the obvious implication is that in the future we’re going to need better heart pacemakers and better systems for insulin injection. The future seems to be heading towards more sophisticated implantable machinery, be it pacemakers or sustainable drug-release devices inside the body. But the more sophisticated we want them to be, the faster their power supply – the battery – will run out. How do we deal with that?

One possible solution of many has been published recently in the Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems. The researchers developed a generator that can harvest energy from the body heat and convert it into electricity. While thermoelectric power generators came into existence long before this study, the new generator has increased energy efficiency. The device attaches to the body and can only generate a power output of 1.3 microwatts, but that might be enough to help the constant recharge of implanted medical devices, and prolong their battery lifetime.

In general, the study and development of novel implantable biomedical devices and the question of finding a suitable power source for them are some of the top challenges of nowadays biomedical engineering. In the soon to come ILSI-BioMed Week 2010, one of the very first seasons will include a lecture by Dr. Bryant D. Moore about ‘ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF FUTURE IMPLANTABLE SYSTEMS’. Dr. Moore is currently the vice president of research and technology in the New Therapies and Diagnostics Division of Medtronic’s Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management Business. It will be very interesting to hear his view on the future of implantable devices, and where they are heading.

Source: PhysOrg

ILSI-BioMed Week: Meet the Speakers

ILSI-BioMed Week: The Program

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One year ago, a group of researchers at Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem reported a sharp rise in the diagnoses of a certain metabolic disorder. To those of us who live in Jerusalem, fear not. Other than the Holyland story, nothing really happened in the Israeli capital in the last year. The only change is that the lab at Hadassah changed the supplier of its pipette tips. No more, no less.

You might find it hard to believe that the mere changing of a plastic supplier can affect the diagnosis of a medical disorder. It turns out more and more, though, that plastics can seriously influence the outcome of biomedical experiments and tests.  The most recent example was published just two days ago in BioTechniques by Lewis et al, and caught attention from Nature’s news crew who began circulating the announcement to the scientific community around the globe. It’s might important, too, as the discovery relates to protein and DNA extraction and PCR reactions, which most of the biologists do at one point or another in the research.

To sum up the results briefly, Lewis et al bring evidence that chemicals can leach out of polypropylene tubes and into the solution inside. Those chemicals absorb at wavelengths between 220 and 260 nanometers, which means they’re highly likely to distort a spectrometer reading of the amount of DNA in the solution, perhaps by as much as 300%, according to the researchers.

How to get over the problem? Lewis et al report they are using only tubes which are low in additives. This is another potential problem, obviously, since some of the additives are there for a reason: to harden the plastic, make it more heat resistant or preserving it over time. But if your research is truly important to you, I’d say it’s the right choice.

In the BioMed-ILSI week (two months from now), Prof. Daniel Cohn from the Casali Institute of Applied Chemistry in the Hebrew University will give a lecture on June 15th about Novel Biomedical Polymers and Medical Devices. It might be interesting to learn his views about this problem, and what’s more, perhaps he has an insight on the additives in question – and whether they can be found in implantable polymers as well.

The Incident in Hadassah

BioTechniques Journal

A News Article in Nature on the Matter

The Program of ILSI-BioMed week

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Post-operative adhesion is considered a major cause of failed back surgery. In up to 15% of cases, patients suffer from pain due to spinal adhesion, or scar tissue formation around the spinal cord, which may require a second surgery for correction. Magen’s flagship device, the SpineShield, uses Magen’s proprietary technology to prevent fibrotic adhesion of the scar to the dura and the nerve root and to reduce related pain and complication risks. The SpineShield is a metal device that physically separates the scar from the delicate spine structures. After healing, the SpineShield is removed during a short minimal invasive out-patient procedure.

Magen initiated its first-in-human, single-center, prospective feasibility study to assess the initial safety and efficacy of the SpineShield implantation for the prevention of epidural scar fibrosis following hemilaminectomy. The study is being held in the Neurosurgery Department of the Bagdasar Arseni Emergency Hospital, Bucharest, Romania. To date, three SpineShield devices have been successfully implanted and removed from three patients. The removal procedure was performed through a minimal invasive 1cm incision. According to initial feedback from patients and physicians, the removal procedure was painless, easy, and took a few minutes only. No complications were reported. An additional seven patients will be enrolled in the study.

Prof. Gorgan, principal investigator of the clinical study, expects “the SpineShield to dramatically reduce fibrosis adhesion observed in post-operative MRI images” and believes that “he will be able to offer his patients a new solution to improve treatment outcome.” Prof. Gorgan adds that “we are very excited and trust that the SpineShield has the potential to change spine surgery practice.”

“This is an important day for us, as it recognizes three years of extensive R&D efforts” says Dr. Shmuel Beck, Magen’s CEO. “We anticipate that this initial clinical study and further clinical research will demonstrate the importance of our ground-breaking anti-adhesion device”.

Dr. Beck adds that “Magen is on track to launch the SpineShield in select EU markets in 2010″ and that “distributors have already been appointed in Turkey, South-Africa, Russia and Israel.” In addition, “the company is developing further product lines based on the same technology for tendon and nerve applications.”

About Magen Medical Solutions Ltd.

Magen Medical Solutions Ltd. is a medical device company founded in Israel in 2007, aimed at developing and marketing unique anti-adhesion devices for orthopedic applications. Its first product, the SpineShield, is CE Marked and will be commercially available in the second half of 2010. Additional products, the TendonShield and NerveShield, will be submitted for regulatory approval in EU during 2010. All products will be submitted for FDA clearance in the future. The company’s technology was invented by Dr. Hamid Sharim, Former Head of the Spinal Surgery Unit at Wolfson Hospital, Israel; patent pending. The company is located in Ramat-Gan, Israel. For more information, visit www.magenmed.com

Taken from ILSI website

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Contact lenses containing vitamin E. Credit: Anuj Chauhan, Ph.D.

A new invention in the form of contact lenses against glaucoma, shows how biomedical devices should be designed

I like to think about biomedical instruments as bits of magic. Not because they cause wonders and provide instant-cures (though some do), but because the more ordinary and mundane in appearance they are, the better they become – much as in magic tricks. It’s the Law of the Ordinary ™. If you market a device for overcoming seizures, and it looks like a robotic arm-sleeve, then nobody is going to go out on the street looking like Robocop. In the same vein, the best applications and utilities are those that don’t force people to acquire new habits, like taking three pills before going to bed or (god forbid) working out. Human beings find it hard to rewire new modes of behavior into their brain, and us engineers simply have to deal with it as fact. That’s why the best inventions are also the ones you can use without even taking notice of them.

A great example of this sort of invention comes from the 239^th meeting of the American Chemical Society, in the form of contact lenses that may treat glaucoma. Glaucoma is second only to cataracts as the leading cause of vision loss and blindness in the world, and affects almost 67 million people. The mainstay treatment is eye drops that relieve the abnormal build-up of pressure inside the eye. The drug contained in the drops, however, is swept away within a few minutes by the tears, and hence doesn’t reach the targeted tissue.

The solution offered is a new extended-release delivery approach, which incorporates the drug into contact lenses. The lenses also contain vitamin E molecules that form ‘transport barriers’ and slow down the elusion of the medication from the lens into the eye. In research with laboratory animals, the novel lenses administered drugs up to 100 times longer than most commercial lenses. According to one of the developers, they could be designed for continuous wear for up to a month.

Obviously, this hasn’t gotten out to the market yet, and probably has a pending patent anyway. All the same, I like the elegant way in which the invention combines the ordinary (contact lenses) with a much needed medication. You won’t forget to put on your contact lenses, and you don’t even have to cut work short each day and ask one of your friends to hold your eyelashes while you apply eye drops. Simple, clean and ordinary. Magic and biomedicine at their best.

Source: American Chemical Society

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The Human Genome Project was first launched in 1990 by the US government, and a working draft of the genome was issued ten years later. At 1998, a similar venture was launched by Craig Venter and his firm Celera Genomics, who made use of a faster sequencing method to reach an initial working draft in only two years. It’s clear that genetic sequencing technology is being developed at a rapid pace, and now a new research sheds light on what may be the high-speed sequencing technology of the future: using carbon nanotubes for the diagnosis of each individual’s genetic makeup.

The new technique, as published in the current issue of Science is based on threading single-stranded ribbons of DNA through a carbon nanotube, producing voltage spikes that provide information about the passage of DNA bases as they pass through the tube. The single-stranded DNA is drawn into the opening of the nanotube and translocated from the anode side of the nanotube to the output cathode side, due to the negative charge carried by the DNA molecule.

The bright side is that this method can be used with thousands of carbon nanotubes at the same time, through which will pass millions of DNA segments, to give an accurate reading of the entire genome in less than an hour. This vision, however, is still very far from reaching home base. For one thing, carbon nanotubes are still quite costly to manufacture. For another, the entire process of threading the DNA through the nanotubes has still been demonstrated only in the lab and under carefully controlled conditions. Last but not least, even in the labs nobody has yet managed to utilize this method to actually sequence a DNA segment. In short, the future is still far, far away.

Source

The paper in Science

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A novel therapeutic method, which can be used for the treatment of pressure ulcers, diabetic ulcers, post-surgical wounds and first and second degree burns, has received the FDA clearance

Rosh Ha’Ayin, Israel, December 15, 2009 – EnzySurge Ltd. (EnzySurge), a provider of innovative solutions for the advanced chronic wound management market, announced today that it has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market  its new SilverStream™ solution for prescription use. The FDA also cleared DermaSept, an Over-the-Counter version of the SilverStream product.

EnzySurge is the developer of the DermaStream® product line.  DermaStream is a line of woundcare devices that allows for the continuous streaming of fresh therapeutic solutions, such as SilverStream, over the wound bed.  The treatment provides constant removal of foreign material, exudate, micro-organisms and debris while creating negative pressure over the wound.

SilverStream may be either applied directly onto the wound or by the disposable DermaStream® device. According to Dr. Noa Hadar and Prof. Amihay Freeman who led the development, SilverStream is a hypertonic solution that contains very low concentration of preservative silver ions. “SilverStream has demonstrated remarkable capabilities by in-vitro testing inhibiting the growth of drug-resistant clinical bacterial strains, yeast and fungi upon contact in-vitro”, stated Freeman.

SilverStream is intended for use under the supervision of a healthcare professional for management and moisturizing of wounds such as stage I-IV pressure ulcers, stasis ulcers, diabetic foot ulcers, post-surgical wounds, first and second degree burns, cuts abrasions and minor skin irritations. DermaSept is intended for the management and moisturizing of minor cuts, minor burns, abrasions and irritated areas.

“We are extremely pleased to receive FDA clearance for this unique product”, says Amir Shiner Chief Executive Officer of EnzySurge. “We believe that SilverStream is a powerful wound management solution and will be a significant addition to the DermaStream® product line, which is intended to become the wound management system of choice. We are poised to launching SilverStream to market in 2010 with our U.S. partner, the Virginia Biosciences Commercialization Center.”

The treatment of chronic wounds (such as diabetic, pressure and venous ulcers) is expensive, laborious and requires ongoing application and monitoring by a skilled caregiver. The global market for chronic wound products amounted $3.2 billion in 2008 and is expected grows to $4.1 billion by 2011.

“The recent achievements of EnzySurge and especially this FDA approval for SilverStream, represent significant opportunities for EnzySurge in the global wound care market in the near future”, says Shiner.

About EnzySurge Ltd.

EnzySurge Ltd. is a developer and provider of innovative solutions for the treatment and management of chronic wounds. EnzySurge’s DermaStream® platform offers a new and unique wound treatment modality by continuously streaming a fresh supply of advanced therapeutic solutions to a controlled wound environment. DermaStream is designed to deliver effective, affordable and easy-to-use wound treatment throughout all phases of chronic wound treatment from debridement, through regeneration to wound closure. The EnzySurge product line is intended for use in hospitals, clinics and for home care.

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I keep reading everywhere about cures for cancer. Almost every day I hear about this or another new way to solve cancer, coming in the freshest press release from the universities and research labs. This is nonsense, obviously. Cancer is just a tiny word for the hundreds of different afflictions that arise when a cell can’t control itself any longer and the immune system turns a blind eye on it. There is no miracle cure for this entire category of disorders. All the same, possibly the most important thing we need right now is the ability to diagnose a cancer patient early on, when the tumor is less than a thousand cells in size. If we manage to do that, the chances of it being eliminated using chemotherapy are actually pretty good. Sadly, most people go to the doctor when they’re feeling pain, which usually means the tumor already contains a few millions – if not billions – of cells. We need better diagnostic systems!

A possible solution for this problem was published on December 13 in the advanced online publication of Nature Nanotechnology. A team led by Yale University researchers has used nanosensors to measure cancer biomarkers in whole blood samples. The novel device filters the biomarkers from the loaded blood sample and thus creates a buildup of the cancer antigens on the chip, which allows for detection of extremely small concentrations of the biomarkers. So far they’ve managed to detect only antigens specific to prostate and breast cancer, but it’s a good start, and the read out time take only a few minutes. I dare dream of the day when every doctor will have such a device in his office calibrated for most types of cancer, and will ask every patient to give a blood sample every year. When that day comes, I suspect that cancers of all sort will receive a harsh blow.

Source in Yale University

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